The horror films of George A. Romero

"Night of the Living Dead" (1968)

Heralded as one of the most terrifying films ever made, it was an early triumph from the horror master, who brought chills and gore at the movies to new levels.

Romero died on Sunday, July 16, 2017, at age 77.

By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan

Credit: Walter Reade

Horror Master

Born in New York City in 1940, George Andrew Romero graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. He also worked as an assistant on film crews (including "North by Northwest" and "Peyton Place") and on the public television series "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," which taped in Pittsburgh. He settled in that city, helping create an advertising agency and shooting commercials and industrial films, before setting out to make a low-budget film of his own.

Credit: Universal Pictures

"Night of the Living Dead" (1968)

George A. Romero's first feature film was an ultra-low budget horror flick, shot in the Pittsburgh area, about a swarm of cannibalistic zombies.

Though they're not called zombies in the film, and no explanation is offered for the reanimation of the dead, the flesh-eating ghouls (which Romero borrowed from the Richard Matheson novel, "I Am Legend") would spark an entirely new genre of horror film.

Credit: Walter Reade

"Night of the Living Dead" (1968)

What ARE you doing in that graveyard? Judith O'Dea encounters her terrifying co-stars in George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead."

Credit: Walter Reade

"Night of the Living Dead" (1968)

In the film, seven people are trapped in a farmhouse, boarding up windows while ghouls amass outside. The hero, played by Duane Jones, was black - a rarity for a horror film 50 years ago.

In his appreciation of the film, "Sunday Morning" film critic David Edelstein wrote: "It was 1968, the height of 20th century American social upheaval: The Vietnam War seen every day on TV, race riots, the nuclear family fracturing. "Night of the Living Dead" didn't happen in a vacuum. Romero poured that unrest into the film, which opens with a flag fluttering in a lonely cemetery, and ends with images that evoke a lynching."

"Night of the Living Dead" (1968)

Russell Streiner, one of the undead (and one of the producers), in "Night of the Living Dead."

Because of a screwup by the distributor, the film was not copyright protected and entered the public domain. As such, "Night of the Living Dead" has been copied and sold by numerous outlets, and remains the most-downloaded film from the Internet Archives.

Credit: Walter Reade

"Season of the Witch" (1972)

Following "There's Always Vanilla" (1971), a forgettable romantic comedy, Romero wrote and directed "Jack's Wife," about a suburban housewife who gets mixed up with Satanism.

It bombed after the distributor marketed the film as soft-core porn, with the title "Hungry Wives!" Reviewers were not kind. But following Romero's later success with "Dawn of the Dead," it was re-released under the title "Season of the Witch."

Credit: Jack H. Harris Enterprises

"The Crazies" (1973)

In "The Crazies," an accident causes a biological weapon to be released into the water supply of a small Pennsylvania town. Spreading like a virus, the bioweapon causes people to become homicidal, setting up the military to swoop in and try to clean matters up.

Credit: Cambist Films

"Martin" (1978)

Romero dipped into vampire lore with "Martin," about a young man with a taste for blood. He tries to dispel others' fascination with vampires (it's not "magic stuff," he tells listeners of a radio show), at the same time he eagerly searches for new sources of refreshment.

Credit: Libra Films

"Martin" (1978)

John Amplas in "Martin."

Credit: Libra Films

"Dawn of the Dead" (1978)

In "Dawn of the Dead," Romero's first sequel to "Night of the Living Dead," the contagion of reanimated dead has spread across the United States.

Credit: UFD

"Dawn of the Dead" (1978)

Romero targeted consumerism in "Dawn of the Dead," as a shopping mall became the battleground for hordes of zombies, with much blood shed, as surviving humans taking refuge turn on one another.

Romero's zombies were always more than mere cannibals - they were metaphors for social ills - racism, militarism, class differences, consumerism, and the rigidity of conformity.

"The zombies, they could be anything," Romero told The Associated Press in 2008. "They could be an avalanche, they could be a hurricane. It's a disaster out there. The stories are about how people fail to respond in the proper way. They fail to address it. They keep trying to stick where they are, instead of recognizing maybe this is too big for us to try to maintain. That's the part of it that I've always enjoyed."

"Knightriders" (1981)

In addition to acting and stunt work, Savini is a special effects artist who was responsible for many of the bloody makeup effects in Romero's films.

Credit: UFD

"Creepshow" (1982)

A ghoulish figure in the horror anthology "Creepshow," inspired by 1950s horror comic books like "Tales From the Crypt." Written by Stephen King and directed by George A. Romero, the film featured five comical and macabre stories.

Credit: Warner Brothers

"Creepshow" (1982)

Stephen King appeared in one of the stories in "Creepshow," as a farmer who suffers the indignity of turning into a plant after touching the gooey substance from inside a meteorite.

Credit: Warner Brothers

"Creepshow" (1982)

When you see a trail of blood, think before following it to its source: Fritz Weaver in "Creepshow."

Credit: Warner Brothers

"Creepshow" (1982)

Leslie Nielsen played a cuckold whose scheme to kill his wife and her lover takes a sinister turn in "Creepshow."

Credit: Warner Brothers

"Day of the Dead" (1985)

In "Day of the Dead," the third of Romero's "Dead" series, the zombie apocalypse has ravaged the world.

In 2009 critic Roger Ebert wrote that zombies "make excellent movie creatures because they are smart enough to be dangerous, slow enough to kill, and dead enough that we need not feel grief."

Romero, Ebert added, "has not even begun to run out of ways to kill them."

Credit: UFDC

"Day of the Dead" (1985)

The undead in "Day of the Dead."

Credit: UFDC

"Monkey Shines" (1988)

In "Monkey Shines," a quadriplegic (Jason Beghe) is given a service monkey to aid him. However, the monkey has been injected with human brain cells as part of an experiment, which gives it a strange telepathic bond with the man, allowing him to act out his most violent fantasies.

Credit: Orion Pictures

"Monkey Shines" (1988)

Thoughts can kill (with a little help from a chimpanzee): Jason Beghe in "Monkey Shines."

Credit: Orion Pictures

"The Dark Half"

In "The Dark Half," adapted from the Stephen King novel, Timothy Hutton plays a novelist who wants to literally bury his pulp-fiction pseudonym -- but the pseudonym has other ideas as it takes physical form.

Credit: Orion Pictures

"Bruiser" (2000)

In "Bruiser," Jason Flemyng played a businessman whose violent fantasies turn real once his face is transformed into an anonymous mask.

Credit: Canal+

"Land of the Dead" (2005)

Romero returned to the "Dead' series with "Land of the Dead," in which Pittsburgh has become a sanctuary in a world decimated by zombies. But even within the barricades, class divisions still played out in a satire of contemporary society.

Credit: Universal Pictures

"Land of the Dead" (2005)

More gore in "Land of the Dead."

Credit: Universal Pictures

"Land of the Dead" (2005)

As if zombies weren't scary enough, how about a zombie with a meat cleaver? From "Land of the Dead."

Credit: Universal Pictures

"Land of the Dead"

Eugene Clark as "Big Daddy Zombie," leads a group of the undead through the river seemingly protecting Pittsburgh from the zombie hordes, in "Land of the Dead."

Credit: Universal Pictures

"Land of the Dead" (2005)

Jennifer Baxter in "Land of the Dead."

Credit: Universal Pictures

"Diary of the Dead" (2007)

Romero's fifth "Dead' film, "Diary of the Dead," follows a student filmmaker, making a horror movie, who accidentally captures the unfolding disaster of a zombie apocalypse.

Credit: Weinstein Company

"Survival of the Dead" (2009)

Romero followed "Diary" with "Survival of the Dead," in which not many humans survived.

Credit: Magnet Releasing

"Survival of the Dead" (2009)

Watch out! A scene from "Survival of the Dead."

Credit: Magnet Releasing

"The Crazies" (2010)

Because of the copyright status of "Night of the Living Dead" a remake was made of that film in 1990, directed by Tom Savini; a 3D version was shot in 2006, and a computer animated version was released in 2015.

But advances in gore effects have also led to remakes, as in the 2010 version of "The Crazies," executive produced by Romero, and directed by Breck Eisner.

Credit: Overture Films

Portrait

"It's very easy to tell the truth in fiction, and particularly in fantasy," Romero told the A.V. Club in 2008. "The Grimms' fairy tales were political when they were first written. To me, it's a good way to use the genre… and so few people do it. I think in some ways, it actually gets the point across more. It would be very hard to write a serious drama and say some of these things. You can be much more abstract and allusive with horror."